life can be so many things

there has been a lot going down this week.  and i've had a lot to say, i still do i think.  but i've been a little bit gun shy because someone who i love very dearly, mentioned that he's worried that i'm a little bit depressed based on what i write here.

and i'm not depressed, and i hope i'm not depressing, that is the last thing i want to be.  so i'm having a bit of writers block or rather, fear, that i might write something that could be construed as negative, or overwhelmed, or irritated or sad.   but there are parts of life that are negative, overwhelming, irritating and sad!  just as there are parts that are joyful and funny and fabulous and amazingly perfect. and i am vibrant and extreme-i'm not easy, or breezy, or mild.  i feel things intensely and for me, depression is the opposite of that, depression is flat line- it's the absence of feeling intensely- and in this season of life, i'm thankfully not feeling the lack of feeling.

things have been hard this week.  a friends son here has cancer.  he's 13, they are poor, and they live in uganda.  there is no health insurance, there are no real ICU's, there are no clinical trials, chemotherapeutic agents aren't easy to find, blood products are constantly in shortage, water isn't clean, floors are often made of dirt.  it's a hard place to find treatment, it's a hard place to be if you do get treatment and then have no immune system but live with constant exposure to infection, it's a hard place to be if you then get an infection with no immune system, and there's no healthcare system to provide supportive care.
this is hard hard.  hard to watch, to figure out, to translate at each visit.  hard to imagine if it were my child.  hard to grasp the disparity; the reality that while 85% of kids with this cancer in the US are cured, <5% are in africa. 

what lines need to be drawn? what boundaries? how far do we go for help? how much money do we need to raise?  and why is this country not working harder to get cancer care? maybe because they still don't have mattress or sheets on the city hospital beds, maybe because they don't have a reliable CT scanner, or because people are still dying of malaria, HIV and TB, so resource-wise- where does pediatric cancer come in?

maybe because people are still dying in boda-boda accidents because they don't wear helmets- like the two bodies i drove by last night in the rain.  it's a lot to see and take in- life in the developing world.  when i saw them there, lying helmetless and bloodied and bent the wrong way in the middle of the road with the smashed bike beside them, i cried hard- not because i'm depressed, but because those tears had been sitting inside me for a while.  i'd wanted to cry all day since leaving the oncologists office wondering what we were going to do- i cried because of all of it- death, illness, kids having cancer, people living in poverty, and what is our response?

so today i got up early- extra early- to take this boy and his mom to the hospital again for a bone marrow biopsy and some chemo.  i got up early and i asked God to please walk with me today- because i promised i would, and i could tell i especially needed Him.  and i began to try.  i began to think big. to wonder if maybe we can change cancer care in uganda - one case at a time. 

i began to remember that we need to do for one what we wish we could do for everyone.  that we need to care deeply, to be there with each other in suffering, even if there isn't an answer, or there won't always be blood products or ICU's, or helmets.  that God can bring healing to this boy, and to this country, that He wants to walk with us each day, even and especially, on the bad days.   so even though it was early and the traffic was bad, we laughed a lot on the way in.  and even though we'd all missed lunch, and my car had been broken into while in town, and we had to pull over so tim could vomit several times on the way home, we were thankful that i'd been able to locate some of the chemo agents with the help of a friend, thankful that the car hadn't been stolen, thankful that God had brought us together. 

and we talked about how great it would be if timothy's case helped to reform cancer care for all kids in uganda.  we talked about seeing through the glass dimly, that life is bigger than what is in front of our eyes.  the violin can't see and hear the entire orchestra- but there is a great conductor- we play our small part and we trust that the pieces will in some way, fit together.  and even in this, there is still joy and we can still be amazed.